mock-heroic- poem The Rape of the lock

mock-heroic- poem
Satire is a literary form that uses exaggerations and ridicules to expose truths about society.

• Epic poem:
• Devided in 5 cantos
• Written in heroic couplets (rhyming pairs of iambic pentameter), they confer a melodious form to the poem
• Based on real events 
• Contains all the standard features of the epic genre: a dream message from the gods, arming the heroes, sacrifice to the gods, exhortation to the troops, single combat, epic feast, journey to the underworld, general combat, intervention of the gods

• The rendering of the card game as a battle constitutes an amusing and deft narrative feat. By parodying the battle scenes of the great epic poems, Pope is suggesting that the energy and passion once applied to brave and serious purposes is now expended on such insignificant trials as games and gambling, which often become a mere front for flirtation. The structure of “the three attempts” by which the lock is cut is a convention of heroic challenges, particularly in the romance genre.

1. In Canto IV, Umbrio unleashes the bag of “[s]ighs, sobs, and passions” over Belinda increasing her anger and despair. Afterwards, Thalestris, her friend, (In Greek mythology, Thalestris is the name of one of the Amazons, a race of warrior women who excluded men from their society) tries to convince Belinda, holding a long speech, to revenge herself, and so she demands “her beau”, Sir Plume, to challenge in defense the Baron for Belinda’s honor. The Baron refuses to give back the lock of hair, for as Sir Plume’s speech is clumsy and does not compare with any of the way, in which a true knight should act. Pope emphasizes here the fall of chivalrous acts and behavior of the courtly men.

• At that moment, the Gnome unlashes the remaining vial of sorrows causing Belinda to overreact. She starts to cry, cursing her life at the Court and the day she had ignored the dream-warning. The drama she creates for the stealth of her lock of hair has nothing to do with the branch of chastity but more with her public reputation. Belinda’s appearance seems to matter more for her than her inner self. She would have rather been made fun of her personality/integrity than her appearance, “Oh hadst thou, cruel! Been content seize/ Hairs less in sight, or any hairs but these!”

• The Vth Canto consists of, the end of the course of actions, and the moral conclusion of the mock-heroic poem from the eyes of Clarissa, the one that handed out the scissors to the Baron.  Clarissa, the voice of the poet in this part of the poem, underlines the true important things in life, what lies within the inner of a person, the beauty inside, not the one outside oneself.

The mock-heroic conclusion of the poem is designed to compliment the lady it alludes to (Arabella Fermor), while also giving the poet himself due credit for being the instrument of her immortality. This ending effectively indulges the heroine’s vanity, even though the poem has functioned throughout as a critique of that vanity. No real moral development has taken place: Belinda is asked to come to terms with her loss through a kind of bribe or distraction that reinforces her basically frivolous outlook. But even in its most mocking moments, this poem is a gentle one, in which Pope shows a basic sympathy with the social world in spite of its folly and foibles. The searing critiques of his later satires would be much more stringent and less forgiving.


Work Citation


Csécsi, Petra. “The Rape of the Lock-Analysis.” Academia.edu, www.academia.edu/38450422/The_Rape_of_the_Lock-analysis.